Yearbook (3 page)

His father—Big Nathan—was a hunter. He and two buddies had a shoot planned for Sunday. Guy’s brother Butch was going. Guy wasn’t. His father said he was still too irresponsible to handle firearms.

Guy wandered about the open fields, his secondhand Pentax poised, stalking subject matter. A family of camera-shy rabbits had obvious difficulty distinguishing shutters snapping from guns cocking and dove for cover.

Looking forward to developing his candid shots, Guy started for home. Half an hour later, as he pedaled onto his block, he saw a large moving van parked outside his house.

No!
Guy squeezed the brakes.
They’re abandoning me!

He sped toward the driveway, all set to throw himself at Birdie’s feet, to beg her not to let the family move away without him.

Visions of being shipped to an orphanage did not, in fact, subside until he got close enough to realize something was being moved
into
the house, not out. Two men, overweight and fighting for breath, were wheeling an upright Steinway piano past the front steps and into the livingroom.

“What’s this all about?” Guy asked his mother.

“Your father has decided Rose should take piano lessons. She starts tomorrow. Your father feels she’s musically inclined.”

His father was wrong. Tone deaf and disinterested, Rose cared only to spend her afternoon hours sipping Cokes at Gateway Lanes while watching her boyfriend, Jonathan Leeds, bowl. The very notion of piano lessons made her wince.

Not so Guy. As soon as the moving men drove off, he sat down in front of the new toy and did not get up again for three hours. He fooled around, experimenting with the keys, instinctively discovering chords and, by the end of the day, almost managing a tune.

On Wednesday afternoon Rose sat through the longest hour of her life, having great difficulty locating middle C. When her spinster instructor finally left, she heaved with relief and dashed upstairs to tweeze her eyebrows.

The piano bench was still warm when Guy got to it moments later. Picking up where he’d left off the day before, he continued teaching himself by ear. Rasputin served as Guy’s audience. While the eleven-year-old calico snoozed on the window ledge, curled up like a tiny orange puma, Guy practiced.

Two hours later Birdie strolled into the living room with her latest batch of calories. Guy dutifully tasted and rated her baking, then plinked out a surprisingly respectable, almost recognizable version of “The Ballad of Davy Crockett.”

Birdie was impressed. “Where’d you learn that?”

“Don’t know. It’s just easy to find on the ivories. “

Birdie sat next to him and stuffed half a date-nut brownie into his mouth.

Guy swallowed and went back to the keyboard.

Ro-Anne hated French. So boring. Useless. There weren’t even any French restaurants in Waterfield to show off what she might have learned if she took the trouble to pay attention.

How, she wondered, would she ever make it through an entire term of grammar and parsing sentences if here she was, stifling yawns the first weekofclasses?

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday had been an easy enough waste of time; receiving textbooks, filling out Delaney cards, lining up along the walls of the room, being seated alphabetically—you could always count on getting stuck next to the biggest creeps.

Today was different. Work. Bill Rinaldi, up there at the blackboard, conjugating a verb. Ro-Anne looked to the ceiling, wishing the day would end. He can’t even speak English yet. How’s he going to learn French?

Pen in hand, she hastily wrote on three-hole, loose-leaf paper:

Clouds of romance filtered into the room even as Bill Rinaldi’s piercing Long Island French accent faded into the background. Stroking her magic lantern, Corky’s ID, the genie of memory soon had her transported far away from French, back to one of her best-loved school-hour preoccupations—reliving the first time they had met. The memory was a favorite among her oldies-but-goodies…It was a year ago, practically to the day. A traveling carnival had come to an open meadow high with weeds. The tall grass of this one-time cow pasture was mowed, a tent was pitched and, in just a few hours, the area was ablaze with gaudy neon.

Immersing herself in the delicious memory, Ro-Anne totally recalled how Corky and four fellow members of the football varsity had downed six-packs before arriving at the carnival grounds, then wandered about, looking for action. When they came on a Measure-Your-Strength machine
(Sissy
to
Superman),
the biggest of them said they ought to have a whack at it. Two shots for ten cents!

The boys giggled, slapped at each other, paid their money and took their chances. By the time it was Corky’s turn at the mallet there were forty young people watching. None of the boys had connected yet and the highest rating managed so far wa
sLimp-Wristed.
Lots of laughs over
that.

Ro-Anne once again saw herself standing in the crowd with her girl friends; once again knew the feeling as she took literally one look at Corky Henderson and decided
that
was for her.

And why not? Her mother had early-on convinced her that she was the Prize Package who should settle for nothing but the finest. “A girl with
both
beauty and money can take all the time she wants, Ro. They’ll be lining up for you, honey, and that’s a fact. You just let them wait.”

Ro-Anne decided she’d waited long enough. Pleased to be wearing her tight maroon sweater, she smiled and waited for Corky Henderson to notice her. Confident, she waited for her life to begin.

After more shoving and punches-on-the-arms, Corky got down to business. He removed his football jersey, let it drop to the ground.

His long back glistened with sweat. His tensed muscles strained as he wound up and swung the mallet down hard.

The marker slid up to
Not Bad.

Corky was about to take his second swing when, turning around, he spotted Ro-Anne—picture of loveliness—staring at him. Prettiest damn thing he’d ever seen.

They gazed at each other a few long moments. Sparks flew. Ro-Anne calculated.

She tingled thinking about how it would be. First she would invite, taunt, give just enough but hold him just far enough off to keep up his interest. Not until she was good and ready, not until she was confident of his total respect, not until then would she finally bestow upon him full rights to her sacred, long pursued flower. She had planned forever each and every detail of the momentous moment—nothing in this world could divert her from them.

Candles. Lots and lots of candles, different sizes and scents, all around the room. Loads of pillows. And music, glorious music. Johnny Mathis singing “The Twelfth of Never” or “Chances Are.” Maybe some Kostelanetz or Mantovani for class. Giving up your most valued possession was no ordinary occasion.

Relaxed in the surety of her plan, Ro-Anne smiled.

Corky smiled too. He smiled at her, and the intense message in his eyes was delivered warm and fast.
This next one’s for you!

He turned around, smashed down the mallet and sent the round metal indicator up, up, up, climbing higher and higher until, with a
bong!
that rang throughout the meadow, it struck the bell at the top.
Superman!

Ro-Anne shivered. A feathery tickle circled the space between her legs.

When the noise and whoops had died down some the concessionaire handed Corky an enormous pink stuffed elephant, which he accepted and, as though planned, walked over and handed to Ro-Anne. She accepted it without a blush. As though expected.

He flipped his jersey over his shoulder, took her by the hand and led her silently away from her friends, away from the crowd, toward the Ferris wheel some five hundred feet away. Their eyes stayed on each other each step of the way.

Finally hidden from view behind the ride, they stopped underneath a tall maple. Corky reached forward and took Ro-Anne in his arms. Then he gave her the kiss for which she had always been waiting. His tongue swept the inside of her mouth as his inquisitive hands investigated the rest of her.

She never objected, her eyes never strayed from his stare.

“You’re really beautiful,” he told her.

“You are too,” she whispered, in their first exchange of words. The Ferris wheel churned, fireworks danced above.

Not until nearly ten minutes later, when a heavily breathing Corky placed a hand on the zipper of her skirt, did the virgin Ro-Anne manage to whimper, “No, no more.” Summoning all her willpower, she removed his moist hand from the side of her skirt, stood up and rebuttoned her sweater.

Corky stood up too, and shook the grass from his jersey. Ro-Anne hoped he wouldn’t be too annoyed, that he would learn to be patient. After all, surrendering her chastity on the grass behind a Ferris wheel was most definitely not as she’d determined it would be.

She took a deep breath and renewed contact with Corky’s green eyes. “Would you buy me an ice cream cone?”

Corky kissed her again. When their lips parted he said, “Only if you tell me your name.”

It was, she decided, going just fine.

Everyone watched the model couple strolling about. They held hands and traded seductive licks of ice cream cones. The stuffed pink elephant became striped with chocolate and strawberry drippings. The back of Ro-Anne’s skirt bore grass stains. The front of her maroon sweater was covered with…

ClangClangClangClang
, the eighth-period bell sounded, bringing to an abrupt halt the school day, the French lesson and the hallowed remembrance.

Rats! Ro-Anne slap-closed her notebook. Oh, well. No matter. She didn’t really much want to relive the rest of the memory anyway… . Particularly the part in which her well-plotted schedule disintegrated two hours later when thoroughly out of control, Ro-Anne gave up her prized cherry—right in the back seat of Corky’s beat-up old Chevrolet.

FOUR
 

FRIDAY EVENING USHERED IN the new social season. The town buzzed.

Ponytailed Rose Fowler scurried off to her sorority meeting. A tight woolen sweater made her large breasts stand out, and a wide red elastic cinch belt pulled in her flabby midsection. Her sisterhood, Middle Beta, rated third best in the pecking order because its membership consisted of the third-best-looking girls in school. There was no other criteria. That was that.

Her brother Butch, freshly scrubbed, with tiny patches of toilet paper clotting nicks across his chin from his once weekly stab at shaving, borrowed their father Nathan’s Oldsmobile and strutted out of the house. The young peacock burned rubber as he zoomed off to his fraternity meeting. Kappa Phi was his house, and it was number one. Waterfield’s top jocks belonged. Including Corky Henderson.

Finally, as clandestine Greek gatherings came to an end, the teen-aged citizenry gravitated toward Poste Avenue—pilgrims to Mecca. To see and be seen. To hang out. There was the Sugar Bowl for sodas, Gateway Lanes for bowling, the whole of Poste Avenue for cruising.

This Friday was no different from any other for Guy Fowler. As always, he went to the movies.

Arriving at the Avalon just as the show was starting, he handed his seventy-five cents to a sixteen-year-old couple, asking them to purchase his ticket so that he would be accompanied by an adult. Once inside, he flopped down in his favorite third row center seat, cemented his front teeth to a caramel Sugar Daddy and, submitting himself to technicolor, got lost in the John Wayne feature.

The audience was spirited—booing and whistling; throwing popcorn, firing spitballs from the balcony, hurling insults at the screen.

Guy’s favorite actor was John Wayne. After all, Wayne was … Wayne. Tall and tough, nobody could push him around. Surely you couldn’t ask more from a man than that

The last to return home, just before midnight, Guy tiptoed up the stairs of the darkened house until he stumbled over Rasputin, napping on the landing between floors. The calico screeched and clung by its claws to the flowered curtains. Guy picked up the fat fur ball and took it downstairs to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and prepared a peace offering of cream and crackers. A true Fowler, the cat practically drowned himself in his frantic search for the last salt-ine.

A thunder on the stairs. Attracted by the sound of the rattling refrigerator door, Rose now entered the kitchen. Her hair in rollers and her face obliterated by complexion cream, she darted, straight and true, for the fragile Aunt Jemima cookie jar on the counter.

“There I was,” she told Guy vivaciously, “upstairs, reading what Troy Donahue loves about Suzanne Pleshette’s cooking, when I heard all this commotion down here and figured why not investigate … ?” She lifted the dark-lady’s ancient porcelain head and peered down at the vast selection. “Oh dear!” She sniffed into the open cookie jar the way other teenagers sniffed glue. “Oatmeal! Butter-raisin! And chocolate-chip drop! Which do I want, and how many of each?”

Guy looked to the ceiling and stretched wide his hands, seeking God’s wisdom. “Who am I to tell the undefeated winner of the Camp Echo Lake pie-eating contest five years in a row how many cookies she should eat?”

“I know! Two of each. For variety. Start my diet tomorrow, anyway.” She opened the refrigerator. “And a glass of warm milk to send me off to beddy-bye. “ As she poured the milk into a pan she asked, “What’s Butch up to?”

Guy shrugged. “Probably upstairs. I just got home.”

Rose looked at the electric clock above the door. “Midnight!” She frowned. “The dumb movies again?” Guy said nothing.

“My sorority meeting was fabs. We laughed and sang a lot and … mmmm, Til say these are heavensville. Mother sure knows her cookies, doesn’t she?”